You get so much “good” with young United goalkeeper Bill Hamid, but a heaping helping of “bad” as well. Hamid’s decision making was awful on the Crew’s first goal, coming out into a crowd to collect a corner kick but getting nowhere near it. Later, he fumbled a free kick right into the worst spot, into the middle of the field; the Crew’s Ben Speas was there to nail the game-winner.

Speaking of Speas: The Columbus Crew home-grown signing, who debuted on the final match day of 2012, continues to impress. Robert Warzycha and his staff really have something in the young midfielder.

Previously, Speas was a replacement for the injured Eddie Gaven (and PST readers know we always call Gaven one of the most underrated of MLS men.) Saturday Warzycha had them both on the field, at either flank.

Dwayne De Rosario is now into his third season at RFK, and yet the tinkering on how best to use the league’s 2011 MVP continues. He played ahead of holding midfielder Perry Kitchen, behind two strikers on Saturday. In his time at United, De Rosario has operated as a central attacking midfielder in a 4-2-3-1, as a second striker and in the role he occupied Saturday.

First, great win for the Crew. And, a very good start to the season. Road win making up for the home draw last week. Four games played – three of them on the road, three of them against playoff teams last season – and they are sitting on seven points.

Second – that disallowed goal was just bizarre. Ultimately, I think it was the right call. It should have always been called offside. But, to waive play on, and then confer with the assistant referee after the goal was scored? That’s bizarre. You don’t get to play “advantage” on offside.

Third, and most important, I think we need to talk about Bill Hamid in more detail. He’s clearly a very talented young keeper. If he keeps improving, there’s no reason to think he might not be next in the growing line of US ‘Keepers for both the National team and in Europe.

However …

The guy seems to be a walking highlight reel. And I don’t mean that in a good way. He makes the phenomenal plays, the outstanding stops, the highlight-reel plays. He has that insane ability to out of nowhere get to a ball he has no business getting to, and denying what looked like a sure fire goal. He has that talent that if you’re playing against him, there’s a good chance you’re going to end up feeling like you deserved at least one more goal than you got. But, and this is a large but, he doesn’t seem to have the 90 minutes of consistency. He seems to miss out on the routine plays at least once per game (sometimes a lot more than that) and ends up costing his team dearly. If he’s your Keeper, there’s a good chance you’re going to end up feeling like you let one in you shouldn’t have.

I see it like this – in his current form, Hamid is a great keeper to lead you to highlights on SportsCenter, but he’s not the right keeper to have to lead you to silverware.

Hopefully, he can get the right kind of mentoring and coaching to improve upon that. He’s still very young, especially for a position that can have a career go so late into the years.